This blog began in a blur of emergency, advocacy and exhaustion. I felt the need to document my struggle, both internal and in regard to finding a place for my son in the world and our community.
I appreciated the feedback and the support I received through sharing parts of my story here.
But then I started not having the words to be able to relate my experience.
Even now I fumble as I try to articulate what was going wrong, what was going on.
Part of it was being so tired of telling my story anew. What once was therapeutic was becoming a punishing requirement as I catapulted from appointment to appointment. Each new specialist, medical and educational, needed me to start from the very beginning all over again. Groundhog day with variations and a constant return to the chorus.
But the biggest part of it was that I was changing and the change was painful, unwanted, inescapable. I will never again be the person I was when I began this blog.
I am a mother of a child with autism. So much grieving in that announcement. Such relinquishment of the parenthood I had embraced when I chose to become a mother, such abandonment of identity in that relinquishment. How can I be who am when this wasn’t what I wanted and I can never undo the things that have taken place?
I still don’t know.
Every day it’s hard for me to know where to start because deep down I’m not sure who I am any more. What was once an integrated sense of self is now so fractured that I tire myself out just changing gears.
My son is now certainly on the right track, but I’m completely derailed.
The fact I want to tell you about it?
I’m seeing that as a good sign…
